Time May Change Me
by LilacFree
Summary: Set postDoomsday, spoilerish. The Tenth Doctor is feeling his old self again, and that's the problem.I am indebted to David Bowie for the title.


It's mostly silly and mostly harmless. Rated a little higher because Jack is not a Gen kind of guy. I do not own Doctor Who or David Bowie.

* * *

The Doctor had a long nap after the bride incident. It was quite a deep sleep, and he felt fuzzy as he went to wash up. 

Looking in the mirror cleared his head right away.

"You are not supposed to be there," he said to his reflection, and felt at his head. Short hair, big nose, and big ears…

Yup.

He was Nine again. He'd regressed.

"I'm looking younger every day," he mused in a Northern accent.

The instruments in the sickbay were not helpful. Every test said that he was a perfectly healthy, normal Gallifreyan.

Dammit. Where was his leather jacket? Had it been left in Jackie Tyler's old apartment? He wanted his leather jacket!

Entertaining a sudden suspicion, he went to Rose's old room meaning to check her closet. Opening the door was a mistake. It smelled of her—not a stink, though the room was cluttered. But it was her fragrances, her shampoo. The memory of Rose lingered in the air. How could his tenth self be so careless as to let Rose be lost? Hadn't he ever heard of a tether? He couldn't have taken two minutes to tie her down in case of accidents?

"Me, I wouldn't have lost our Rose," he grumbled. His hearts ached. He did NOT want to feel this.

Abruptly, he slid to the floor, consciousness lost.

He woke up a new man. Soft curls cascaded around his face and his clothes were a couple of sizes too big. His shoes did not fit at all. "Oh, no," he said in tones not unlike those of a resident of Liverpool. "This is an ominous trend indeed. You've got to live in the now, Doctor!"

Of course, now, he was the Eighth Doctor. The clarity of the memories of his ninth and tenth lives was a stark contrast to his own patchwork of memories. He was definitely his prior self. It wasn't just an outward change. He kicked off the too-large shoes and bounced to his feet. The floppy clothes were uncomfortable, but he decided to simply roll up his cuffs and make do for now. He hoped he didn't regress any farther. The Seventh Doctor had been a hand shorter. The little fellow would be smothered in the Tenth Doctor's suit.

The Doctor was glad he hadn't found that ratty leather jacket. "U-Boat captain indeed. He looked like a cut-rate thug, Dr. Post-Traumatic-Syndrome Poster Boy." Ending up in the console room, he had a look around. Not bad. A bit _too_ organic, but still his, all his.

It really wouldn't do, though, this regression. Seven wasn't bad, but suppose he went back to Six? He couldn't endure Six's unique fashion sense. And Five was so… so blonde. He started some computations running. Obviously, he was having some kind of regenerative problem. His form had changed without mortal trauma to initiate the process, but what about the regenerative process itself? He'd gone from Ten to Nine in his sleep, and fainted to go from Nine to Eight. Was that the key? Had losing Rose caused him to reach back to a time in his personal history before he'd met her?

"I hope not. That would be awfully soppy. I'm talking to myself again. I need someone here, someone to listen to my ideas and help me clarify my thoughts. Of course! Grace!"

The Doctor started frantically programming a course to San Francisco, then paused as his hands touched the dematerialization controls. "What am I saying? Grace didn't want to come with me." He frowned. "Even Sarah Jane turned me down. Am I losing my charm? No, couldn't be that."

He brushed his chestnut curls back from his face. The overlong cuff of his jacket banged him in the eye. "That's it, I'm changing."

Then in case anyone was listening to his monologue, he added, "Only my clothes! I'm fine with this body, honestly!"

The wardrobe room was full of memories. He came across a doublet that would have fit right in at the court of King Louis XV. "Reinette… I promised to go back to her, and I never did…" He felt all choked up about it.

Perhaps he was allergic to nostalgia, the Doctor wondered as he fainted again.

The Doctor awoke on the floor still dressed in the Tenth Doctor's clothes. "Maybe I should just wear a toga. One size fits all," he said disconsolately, looking up at the distant ceiling. A twenty-foot long scarf fell off the shelf above him. Had he gone right back to his Fourth incarnation? He didn't want to regress to infancy! The Doctor scrambled to his feet as best he could. By the time he'd made it upright, he was quite sure he was his short Seventh self. He rid himself of the pinstriped suit. "Short, roomy bathrobe," he murmured, pulling one on. "Just in case. It's a good thing I don't have companions. This is getting to be embarrassing."

It was obvious that he kept going back because of emotional upset. This indicated a brain chemistry problem. "I really don't want to go back to my Sixth, he was far too volatile to handle this. But what am I supposed to do? Repress all my emotions? Why don't I just turn myself into a Cyberman and be done with it! And I'm talking to myself again." The Doctor's face brightened and he yanked off the bathrobe. "Of course!" he cried, standing triumphantly naked in the center of the wardrobe room. "That's who I need! The Brigadier!"

Feeling vindicated in his present persona, the Doctor dressed himself in typical garb of his seventh incarnation, though the question-mark pullover was not to be found. He tucked a brolly under his arm and returned to the console room to input the coordinates.

The TARDIS materialized. The Doctor stepped out into an English garden. There were sprinklers running and he deployed his umbrella. "This was always so handy," he said, highly gratified.

"That was a new bed of columbine," the Brigadier said reproachfully.

"Sorry, Brigadier."

"Aren't you out of turn? Not that you're not welcome, Doctor, but I was given to understand you'd moved on from that… er… you."

"I'm so glad you know! I'm afraid I'm having a bit of a difficulty just now. I keep changing back. I went from Ten to Nine to Eight and back to me. I don't want to be Six again! He was not without his unique brand of charm, but he had a rough time of it. Five was feckless, and Four was completely unmanageable."

"I'll give you that," said the Brigadier. "It was like trying to leash a herd of cats."

"Three, now, I could get into. Three had sang froid and debonair and… and… je ne sais quoi. And I feel quite close to Two—but One! I was me for nearly 500 years! Five hundred years all in the same body! I don't want to do that again."

"I doubt that will be a problem, Doctor."

The Doctor stared narrow-eyed at the Brigadier. Had that been sarcasm?

"I'm sure you'll figure out the solution." If the Brigadier had been winding him up, his poker face did not reveal it. "Now, what can I do for you?"

"I lost Rose… I'm all alone and I keep talking to myself. It's just not healthy. If I only had Rose, or maybe Jack—yes!" He'd missed Jack so much! The Doctor swung his open umbrella in a triumphant circle. The stress was too much for the struts and it turned inside out and fell limply on the Doctor's prostrate form. He'd fainted again.

The Doctor awoke in a lawn chair. He was covered by a quilt. Looking under the quilt, he found that his clothes were in shreds and that he was a natural blond. "Oh, dear."

"Tea, Doctor?" The Brigadier was quite definitely smirking, but he had tea, so the Doctor forgave him.

"Excellent, thank you very much," the Doctor said gratefully. He sipped the tea and sighed in relief as the anti-oxidants circulated through his blood and stimulated his stressed neural cells. Apparently it was as great a shock to the system to be happy as it was to be sad.

"Maybe you should take it easy for a while, Doctor."

"No, I must get to the bottom of this. Maybe I will go get Jack. He's from the fifty-first century and has a lot of technical knowledge." He wrapped the quilt around himself. "Pardon me if I borrow this, Brigadier," he said, marching with dignity to the TARDIS.

"Not at all, Doctor. Good luck." The quilt did not quite cover the Doctor. The Brigadier averted his eyes.

His Ninth self had clumsily left poor Jack Harkness stuck on a derelict space station in the year 200,100, expecting him to save the entire planet. "That's my job," the Doctor said scornfully. "I only hope Jack won't be too angry." He set the new coordinates, dematerialized the TARDIS, and went to change clothes. Such a pretty quilt, all those floral colors… bright and cheerful! He was a cheerful, optimistic person, and his clothes should reflect that. Why should he be drab like other people? Like, for instance, Nine? And Ten looked like a bank management trainee—no style at all, no imagination.

"If I ever get back to him, I hope I will have refreshed my memory as to the possibilities for really making a statement with personal attire." Of course, anything was better than Edwardian cricket whites. Games mad! Show his fifth incarnation a cricket pitch and the obsession would kick in. They'd all been children. He, Six, was the first mature Doctor.

For instance, his first incarnation had worn black like some Goth-obsessed teenager. How could he have lived on Earth in the Sixties and not picked up some color?

That gave him a few ideas.

The TARDIS materialized in the office of Jack Harkness, executive coordinator of world security. The Doctor checked the screen of the ridiculously tarted up console room. It was so dimly lit he could hardly see his own jacket! At any rate, there was Jack, leaning negligently against his desk, arms folded across his chest, obviously waiting.

The Doctor stepped out.

Jack pulled out a weapon. "Who are you and what have you done with the Doctor?"

"I am the Doctor, Jack. I've simply pregenerated into an earlier form. I'm terribly sorry about the mess my Ninth self left you in. He was obsessed with Rose. Better her than cricket, mind you."

"Cricket?"

"Never mind. Frankly, I could use your help. It's a little complicated—"

"Where's Rose?"

"Alas, Rose. Not dead, yet parted from me by the gulf of the infinite void, trapped in a parallel Universe with her mother, her parallel not-dead father, her ex-boyfriend, and a baby."

Jack punched him.

The Doctor lost consciousness.

When he woke up, his chin was slightly sore but his head was being cradled in Jack Harkness' lap. "Here, drink this," Jack said tenderly, and held a glass to his lips. The Doctor drank. A mix of tea and grain alcohol ran down his throat. His eyes watered and he looked down at himself.

He was wearing a Nehru jacket in fluorescent green with peace beads. "It's worse than I thought," he moaned, "I hope I don't have to go back the same way I came."

Jack undid the jacket and helped the Doctor out of it. Underneath was a white silk round-necked shirt. The Doctor sat up. "What do I look like," he implored, "Blond, brown, grey, Beatle, or white?"

Jack looked him over carefully. The Doctor waited on tenterhooks. "Oh, six feet tall, broad shoulders, blue eyes, sensual lips…and blond."

"Thank goodness. I'm a new old me."

"Doctor, just what is going on? Not that I think it's entirely a bad thing." Jack looked him over again. The Doctor felt somewhat under-dressed.

The Doctor explained about the whole regeneration thing and how he was going back through his former incarnations. "The whole thing seems to be triggered by emotional trauma. Perhaps I should take a course of mild sedatives to flatten out my brain chemistry."

"Maybe you just need to relax?" Jack said hopefully. "I could help with that."

"It is good to see you again, Jack. I'm sorry I left you, but I was into a regeneration crisis and my mind was almost totally focused on survival needs." The Doctor's voice was full of warm sincerity.

Jack smiled at him. "How could I not forgive those blue eyes?"

"What?"

"Never mind. What can I do for you, Doctor? I'll be glad to help."

"I need a companion to talk to, to listen to me. In this condition I can't tell if I'm talking sense. Shall we go to the TARDIS? I'd like to change clothes."

"Certainly. Let me help you up," Jack said, and wrapped his arm around the Doctor's back. "Just lean on me."

A few minutes later, the Doctor found himself back in the wardrobe room. He pulled off the loose olive green silk pants and stood in only the silk shirt, which as it had long tails, provided decent coverage.

"You might want to stick with the silk," Jack suggested, "It's quite flattering." He stroked the Doctor's back.

"I'm glad you're with me, Jack. I feel more clarity already."

"My pleasure, Doctor."

"I haven't had a companion as technologically sophisticated as you since Romana and Adric. Romana was a Time Lady and Adric was a mathematical genius."

Ah, Romana and Adric… both lost now to death. The Doctor felt himself choking up. "Jack, they're both dead… I feel… tell me a joke, something, get my mind off it!"

Jack kissed him.

The Doctor fainted.

When he woke up, his lips were slightly sore but his head was being cradled in Jack Harkness' lap.

His eyes opened wide and he told Jack, "I don't think that was the distraction I was looking for."

"Sorry," Jack said with a noticeable lack of repentance.

"At least you bought me a drink first."

"Now what, Doctor?"

"I've got a back up K-9 in a crate. Between the three of us we should be able to reverse the process."

"And you'll go the other way through your incarnations?"

"Yes, that's the idea."

"I'm on board with this, Doctor. Let's do it."

K-9 was the perfect tool for scanning the Doctor's physiology while he and Jack experimented with various concoctions of brain altering substances. None of them seemed to quite do what was required. Then the Doctor had a break-through.

"I have to go back to go forward. It's like looping around a gravity well to pick up momentum—that's a metaphor, not an analogy, by the way."

"So you have to trigger a strong emotion, and while you're pregenerating, I inject you with the medicine and you go forward?"

"Exactly! All I need is a trigger."

"I could kiss you again," Jack offered helpfully.

"No, I don't want you distracted at the crucial moment."

"I could punch you again," Jack said just as helpfully as before.

"No, if Three got mad at you he'd use his Venusian Aikido and you'd be a dead man. Don't want that happening."

"Venusian aik… right. Okay, then you need to stir up unhappy memories. What's your saddest memory?" Jack got the injection ready.

"The Time War, of course…" The Doctor looked grim. He'd had to see his race destroyed… but his Ninth was already dealing with that pain. He went through the memories that had made him alter before, but they had no effect.

What was really his saddest memory?

_"Grandfather!" Susan cried from the other side of the TARDIS door._ His vision blackened with Susan's voice ringing in his ears. Every cell in his body began to alter.

"Now, Jack," he gasped, "reverse the polarity of the neuron flow…"

He felt a stinging in his arm, and then blacked out completely.

When he came to, Jack Harkness' head was resting on his chest.

"Jack?"

"Doctor, you're breathing… I thought I'd have to resuscitate you."

"What do I look like?"

"Hmmm… slim, dark, foxy, small ears, sideburns," the Doctor grinned at him, "and a cute smile. Which one is that?"

"Tenth! I'm back!" The Doctor leaped to his feet. "I'm back and I feel great! Bring on the universe, I'm ready!"

He felt a distinct draft around his nether regions. All he was wearing was Six's Indian silk shirt. "As soon as I put some clothes on. Do you see my pinstriped suit anywhere?"

"No, but I'll help you look," Jack smiled, "We'll find it eventually."

* * *

The End 


End file.
